Daily Pulp

DearV. —Among other things, this is to tell you that at last I am here, in the country whithersomanysunsetshave led. OneofthefirstpersonsI saw was our good old Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko gloomily crossing Columbus Avenue inquest ofthepetitcafé du coinwhich none of us three will ever visit again. He seemed to think that somehow or otheryou werebetrayingournationalliterature, and he gave me your address with a deprecatory shake of his gray head,asifyou did not deserve the treat of hearing from me.

Ihave a story for you. Which reminds me—I mean putting it like this reminds me—of the days when we wroteourfirst udder-warmbubbling verse, and all things, a rose, a puddle, a lighted window, cried out to us: “I’m a rhyme!” Yes, this isa most useful universe. We play, wedie:ig-rhyme, umi-rhyme. And the sonorous souls of Russian verbslenda meaning to the wild gesticulation of trees or to some discarded newspaperslidingandpausing,andshufflingagain,with abortive flaps and apterous jerks alonganendlesswindswept embankment. Butjustnow I am not a poet. I come to you like that gushing lady in Chekhov who was dying to be described.

I married, let me see, about a month after you left France and a few weeks before the gentle GermansroaredintoParis. AlthoughIcanproduce documentary proofs of matrimony, I am positive now that my wife never existed. You may know hername fromsomeothersource,but that does not matter: it is the name of an illusion. Therefore, I am able to speak of herwith as much detachment as I would of a character in a story (one of your stories, to be precise).

It was love at first touch rather than at first sight, for I hadmetherseveraltimes before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night, asIwasseeingherhome, somethingquaintshehad said made me stoop with a laugh and lightly kiss her on the hair—and of courseweallknowof thatblindingblastwhichiscaused by merely picking up a small doll from the floor of a carefully abandonedhouse:the soldierinvolvedhears nothing; for him it is but an ecstatic soundless and boundless expansion of what had beenduringhis lifeapinpoint of light in the dark center of his being. And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that thevisiblefirmament,especiallyat night (above our blacked-outPariswiththegauntarchesofits boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequateandever-presentsymbolofthatvast silent explosion.

ButIcannotdiscern her. She remains as nebulous as my best poem—the one youmadesuchgruesomefunofinthe LiteraturnïeZapiski. When I want to imagine her, I have to cling mentally toatinybrownbirthmarkonherdowny forearm,asoneconcentratesupona punctuation mark in an illegible sentence. Perhaps, had she used a greateramountof make-up or used it more constantly, I might have visualized her face today, or at least the delicate transverse furrows of dry, hotrougedlips;butI fail, I fail—although I still feel their elusive touch now and then in the blindman’s buffofmy senses,inthat sobbing sort of dream when she and I clumsily clutch at each other through a heartbreaking mist and Icannot seethecolorofhereyes for the blank luster of brimming tears drowning their irises.

She was much younger than I—not as much youngeraswas Nathalieofthelovelybareshoulders and long earrings in relation to swarthy Pushkin; but still there wasasufficient marginforthat kind of retrospective romanticism which finds pleasure in imitating the destiny of a unique genius(downto the jealousy, down to the filth, down to the stab of seeing her almond-shaped eyesturntoherblondCassiobehindher peacock-feathered fan) even if one cannotimitatehisverse. Shelikedminethough, and would scarcely have yawned as the other was wont to do every time her husband’s poem happenedto exceed the length of a sonnet. If she has remained a phantom to me,Imay have been one to her: I suppose she had been solely attracted by the obscurity ofmypoetry;thentoreahole through its veil and saw a stranger’s unlovable face.